If you have an employee that is self isolating, or is sick due to Covid-19 for periods of sickness starting on or after 13th March 2020 they can be paid SSP from the first day of sickness.
Update April 16th: This has now been extended to include employees who are at a very high risk of severe illness from Covid-19 because of underlying health conditions, and have been advised to remain at home for 12 weeks (shielding).
A maximum of 2 weeks SSP can be recovered from HMRC using the Coronavirus Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme (click here for HMRC guidance) via HMRC's online service.
To qualify you need to have a PAYE payroll scheme started on or before 28th February 2020 and fewer than 250 employees on the 28th February 2020.
To add SSP and override waiting days in the system you need to go into Employee Details> Statutory Payments and click the green 'Add' button on the top right of the page, you can then select SSP from the dropdown menu.
1. When you enter the 'from' and 'to' sickness dates the system will apply the normal SSP rules which means deducting 3 waiting days (if sickness is not linked.) To override this you need to tick the override box shown above as (1) and enter 0 into the waiting days and save this.
2. Within the notes option enter your own reference so you can identify this is a Covid-19 SSP payment.
Once this has been saved it will appear within the employee record ready to be paid in the next applicable pay run.
To find out which employees you have paid SSP to under the Covid-19 regulations within Reports>Pay categories report, if you run this report choosing the pay category statutory sick pay and export this to excel this now includes the notes you have applied.
For more information about paying SSP in the system please click here.